soul of mine, heart divine
by rwbyfics
Summary: "I'll always love you."


It's five years after you've left and it rains in thick dark torrents, drenching you from head to toe. You've heard she's around here these days, bought the local bar and refurbished it to sleek sterling and her own personal tastes. She was always a bit too flashy for you, but it kept her smiling so you never really minded that much.

You push open the door; it's heavy and smells wet outside, and the bar is warm inside, faceted Dust crystals embedded into the walls and glowing faintly of fire. _Weiss_, you smile softly at that and strip off your coat; it clings to you and you walk gingerly, like the floor might fall apart because the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

There's one or two people milling around, nursing craft beers or whiskeys, and you see her standing on her tiptoes, perusing her choice of liquor, and her broad shoulders flex involuntarily. Her white tank top stretches across her skin like the unfamiliar tattoo circling her bicep. She'd always talked about getting inked with wide eyes and tumbling, fast words, and the dragon tail that snakes across her arm is gorgeous, especially with the highlight of Ruby's crest at her shoulder blade.

She snags the bottle she's looking for, looks down at it and hums a bit happily, greets you with a smile. She can't see your face yet; you've taken a habit to wearing hats over the past few years because you like the shadow, and you like being anonymous.

"What can I get you, sweetheart?" Her voice is the same, warm and chipper with just the slightest hint of teasing seduction, and you reach up to pull your hat off, bowing your head involuntarily.

"Got any Maker's Mark?" You glance up after a few long moments, and she's staring at you, wide-eyed and full-lipped – god, she looks good with her hair tied back, and then she's embracing you like you never left her behind.

She's lavender and liquor and garter belts mixed with worn leather, and she pulls you into her arms and grabs you like you've never seen a man die in front of your eyes, and kisses your palms like they've never killed and hurt and failed so many times.

"Blake." She breathes out, nosing at your hair and huffing your scent like perfume. "_Blake_." Her arm braces your shoulder blades and squeezes. She seems to be checking if you're solid flesh, not a specter of the night. "God _damn _you, Blake." She's crying now, leaning over the bar to sob into your hair.

"Yang." You whisper her name like it's a secret and hug her back, one hand resting at the warm nape of her neck. She's so warm, and you've forgotten how good she feels to hold. Her hair ghosts over the back of your hand and you shudder at how familiar everything feels.

It feels okay when you're holding her. It feels okay when she's shoving a hand into your knotted hair and pressing the side of your cheek into her pulse, and she feels so soft and giving that you can't help but cry too.

She pulls away first, wiping at her eyes furiously and pressing her palms flush against her cheeks. Her eyes are luminous and she looks angelic, backlit by the bar's ambient glow. Her tan's deeper, her cheeks are curved up into a high slant; she's lost the rest of her baby fat from Beacon, but her dimples still twist into her cheeks when she smiles. She hasn't stopped growing her hair – she's been sitting shiva for years, but she'll never tell you that – it's light gold and flaxen down to her hipbones and she's pushed it sleek against her skull.

"I-I don't know what to say." Her voice wavers uncertainly. You look around to see that the rest of the people in the bar of cleared out, empty glasses and jugs weighting down a few wads of Lien. "We thought you died; the White Fang started going after all of their old members, tying up loose ends – we thought…"

You reach out to touch her shoulder.

"I know what you thought. I had to leave, Yang. It just wasn't safe for me to be around you guys anymore. T-They would have killed you guys too." You hate how weak you sound right now; hate it more than the bile crawling up your throat.

"Bullshit."

You recoil because the word is like a dagger to your chest, and you're trying not to drown in the blood. "What?"

"Bullshit." She growls out again, leaning over the counter so far that her shoulder blades concave. "We could have protected ourselves, protected you – "

"You don't know what I know about the White Fang, Yang." You cut her off sharply, and you wince at how it comes out far angrier than it needs to be. "You haven't seen what I've seen – "

"No, I haven't!" Yang shouts, slamming her fists into the countertop. Granite threatens to split under her heavy palms and you try to will away the tears stinging your eyes. "But that doesn't change the fact that we would have done _anything_ to keep you safe, Blake. We loved you so much, but you pushed us away. You pushed _me_ away."

You're silent, and you stay that way because there's nothing you can say.

"You left us. In the middle of the night – without a word, without a goodbye, and you left because you were _scared_." Yang's deathly quiet now, and she's forcing her voice to stay calm. You can see she's trying so hard to keep from crying. "Ruby cried for a week. A week. She couldn't eat or sleep because she missed you. And Weiss? Weiss went to her _dad_. She told her dad to send out a search team or else she'd release the records of his back alley business deals. She got disowned because of you, but she didn't give two flying fucks. And you left. You left us and we had to deal with your mess."

You meet her eyes, and you can see how tired she looks. Just tired.

"And you?" You ask hesitantly.

"Me?" She laughs, loud and broken, a single howl of desperation. "I spent four goddamn years of my life looking for you. I didn't see Ruby for two years because I was in Menagerie, looking for any Faunus who could help me, who had seen you, who knew you." She pauses to lick her lips and presses on. "She had to have her wedding without me."

You bite down on your lip – hard.

"I guess things finally worked out for her and Weiss then." You say, almost whispering. Yang huffs another laugh, reaching up to stroke a loose tendril of her hair.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so." She catches your gaze and holds it until you look away. "You know, I used to think of getting married to you. Used to think about what it'd be like to be together." You gape at her. She's looking at you with a look of faint regret. "But that was before. And this is now."

She picks up a rag by the sink and wipes down the counter. She makes her way to the few empty tables, retrieving glasses and tucking some tips into her pockets. You watch her work for an hour or so, observing her calloused hands polishing a few bottles of whiskey and shelving them behind her.

The quiet is deafening; it pummels you and winds you like an unending torrent of waves. She hasn't told you to leave, so you stay, and wait. After a while, she plucks a shot glass and amber tequila and pours you a shot. Her hand is steady and light on the bottle and you murmur your thanks before drinking it.

It's sharp and dark on your tongue but you swallow without a word of discontent. She puts the tequila back and looks at you without really looking at you. "I own the place upstairs, turned it into my house. You can stay the night or leave to do… whatever it is you've doing these days." Her voice is hoarse and worn around the edges and you stare at her blankly.

"You'll let me stay…?"

She looks at you this time, really looks at you, eyes narrowed down into slits. "Do you have a problem with that?"

You shake your head vigorously, and she sighs heavily. Yang shuts down all of the lights and locks up quickly. You can see the crease between her eyebrows and wish you could kiss it away, but choose to follow her up the back staircase in silence. She opens the door and lets herself in first, and you stare a bit because her house is everything you'd never expect from her.

It's clean and overlooks the skyline of Mistral, and its furnished nicely, white couches and the latest technological advancements hooked up to the walls. Yang flicks on a few lights and sighs again. She slips off her boots and shrinks by a few inches – she's still a bit taller than you, but she walks with her shoulders rolled in now.

You stand in the foyer, uncertain and uncomfortable in the place that she calls her home. She rummages around in what you suppose is her room and opens another door down the hall, warm light flooding the hallway like sunshine. The clock above the oven reads 2:48, and you can't understand how Yang isn't already asleep.

She pokes her head out of the room and squints at you and you shift on your feet, staring at the cool tile floors. "Are you coming or not?" You take off your thick leather boots, wincing when the rainwater leaves dirty puddles on her floor.

"It's fine." You blink and straighten, and look at her from down the hall. You walk slowly and come face to face with her. Your heart trembles uncertainly as she glances at your lips, but the only contact she offers you is a faint brush of her hand against your cheek. "Go to bed."

"Yang – I – "

"Go to bed." She repeats again, and she just sounds tired and sick of being conscious and alive. "We'll talk in the morning."

You nod numbly and stumble to the room, finding a warm and inviting bed, and shut the lights off with a fumbling hand. You fall asleep, with nothing to dream of.

* * *

You wake up to a faint, distant chatter, and your hand goes to your hip. You keep a gun there for safety; Gambol Shroud became too bulky to carry around all the time on the streets, but you still forged the metal to be reminiscent of the sheathed weapon. It takes you a moment to realize you are in Yang's home, a guest after a half-decade of absence. You turn on your side to check the clock on the bedside table: 10:51.

Time has become useless to you as of late. With all the petty hit jobs you've picked up to make a living, there is nothing except sunrise and sunset and the death in between. You suppose you've been working as a freelancer for a while, getting paid to put bullets through brains, and it's not like you actually care anymore, so you do whatever you do to get by.

You stand on shaky feet and open the door. The chatter is louder now, coming from the kitchen.

Your feet are quiet against the floors, and you walk out to greet Yang. Instead of just your former partner, you find the rest of your old team huddled around a dining table with mugs of coffee in their hands. There's a long moment of breathless quiet before Ruby jumps up to hug you.

"It's really you." She whimpers, and you hug her back. She pulls away after squeezing you so hard, your ribs nearly give out, and you look at her, dark hair rumpled from where it was mussed by your shoulder. Ruby's hair has grown out longer, and her choppy layers have shifted into a shoulder-length bob. Some sections are still scarlet, but she looks older too, no longer short and clumsily cute. The thin band of gold on her left hand looks good on her, and it isn't until then that you notice Weiss, watching you with a fairly neutral expression.

She's cut her hair down to frame her collarbones, pure white shifting along the neckline of her dress, and her eyes are as blue as ever. She looks elegant, and rises in one fluid motion to embrace you. Instead, what you're met with is a flat smack against the back of your head.

Yang snorts in amusement, but you're more preoccupied with the dull ache at the base of your skull. "You absolute _idiot_, Blake Belladonna." She grabs you into a hug, and you feel her strain on her tiptoes. Her frame is adroit as ever, thin graceful limbs bending and twisting with all of the grace of a fawn. When she pulls away, she wipes at her eyes quickly.

Ruby links her hand with Weiss's as easy as breathing, and they sit back down at the table, focusing on a Scroll and its hovering holo-projection. You watch from afar, senses dulled, but when Yang shoves a mug of tea into your hands, you blink in surprise.

"Blake, come see the pictures from Coco and Velvet's wedding! They posted them so quickly too…" Ruby called, waving you over while the pictures shift in its 3D bearings. You walk behind them, sipping at your tea quickly. It burns the tip of your tongue, but you don't even flinch.

The pictures are gorgeous, and the brides look overjoyed, Coco in a stark white designer gown – Chanel, if you'd have to guess – and Velvet in a lacy shift laced with a corset of pearls. A canopy of woven lavender sprigs and nightshade is a setting for one of their photos, Velvet's head bowed demurely as Coco kisses her temple.

"You two didn't go?" You ask as Ruby fawns over the ring bearer – a beaming child with familiar pink eyes. Ruby shakes her head, frowning a bit.

"We just got back from a week-long hunt. You have top notch timing." Ruby smiles sadly. "Maybe we're still a team somehow." You try to ignore the lump in your throat at how wistful Ruby had looked, and choose to divert the attention to point at the ring bearer.

"Whose kid is that?"

"Nora and Lie's." Weiss replies, flicking her finger in front of the Scroll's motion sensor to close out the hologram. You widen your eyes, but you can't say it's really that surprising. The kid's cute, ginger with Lie's eyes and a sweet smile. Weiss stands to set her mug in the sink. "You've missed a lot, Blake."

She keeps eye contact with you, holding a silent conversation while Ruby and Yang go through various feeds of social network sites. She lets out a steady breath. "Yang will probably get you caught up. Ruby and I have to go restock our ammo supply downtown."

Ruby stands and stretches, yawning so loudly that her shirt rides up from its messy tuck in her jeans. Weiss strides over and tugs the hem down so hard, Ruby chokes. "Yeah, this hunt was something else. Weiss's back up Dust crystals did a number on a part of the forest."

"_Ruby Rose, I did not start that fire and you know it!"_

With a few swift goodbyes and warm hugs, the couple sweeps out the door, and Yang flicks through a few notifications on her Scroll. Her mug is half-empty, so you bring the coffee pot over to the kitchen table and refill her drink. She gives a grunt of thanks and you mumble out something that sounds like a "you're welcome".

You finish your tea quickly, and watch Yang sigh and tuck her Scroll into her back pocket. She looks at you distantly and speaks. "I have to start work. The fridge's stocked and all that shit." She knots her hair into a thick ponytail and pulls on her boots by the foyer, leaning her shoulder into the wall as smooth, dark leather stretches across her calves.

She cocks her head. "If you need anything, you know where to find me." She leaves you behind, and it feels like some fucked up opposite reciprocal of five years ago, and you turn back to go to bed for as long as your body will let you.

* * *

You've been sitting in the corner of Yang's bar for a few hours, nursing a whiskey on the rocks and trying to blend into the shadows. When you'd tried to pay Yang for your few drinks, she had given you a look of pure, unadulterated fury, that even your steadfast stubbornness had been shaken.

Yang wipes down a corner of the bar, holding up easy conversation with a girl drinking a frilly Piña Colada. You suppose she's pretty, even you can't deny it with the jealousy bubbling inside you, with wide bright eyes and smooth dark skin. She leans across the bar, arms supporting her cleavage where her white dress cuts a dramatic neckline across her skin.

Yang laughs at something she said, a hearty laugh and the girl giggles too, beautiful and light. She's everything you aren't, peppy and bubbly and sweet, her gesticulations wide and excited. Before you can slam down the rest of your drink in cold fury, a wide, barrel-chested man stumbles from his spot against the wall.

He's screaming and pointing at his companion, a sallow faced older gentleman with thick brows, and when he offers no reaction but a sleepy-eyed blink, he raises a perfectly formed fist with thick, wide fingers.

Your mind moves into overdrive, and before you can even process the fact you're running, your fist connects with a meaty chin. The uppercut is clean and precise, but the man's larger and stronger than a bull, so you shove him into the wall with your bent forearm.

"Get out." You growl, an elbow digging into his pulse. "I'm not fucking around, asshole. _Get out_." The man's face is turning ruddier by the minute, but he still has enough breath left to spit in your face. Your elbow drives into his windpipe, sharp and hard enough that he wheezes.

You grab him by the back of the neck and slam him against the wall, and you know it would just take a few more drives of his skull for internal bleeding to start becoming a possible outcome. While you're deciding how long you should punch him in the gut, Yang calls out to you.

"_Blake_." Her voice is stern, and you glance just behind you. Yang's standing at the bar, knuckles white on the counter. She doesn't tell you to calm down or to stop, but her eyes glow so brightly in the dim bar that you let go of the drunk. He slumps against the wall, but you don't really give a shit anymore now that he's reduced to a whimpering mess.

You swipe at the thick spit that landed just under your eye, and storm out of the bar, rushing into the rain just to feel something other than a faint hollowness.

* * *

You light a cigarette. Bad habits die hard, you suppose melancholically, watching your newest bedmate of the night buckle her bra. There's no connection between you two, she's just a distraction to forget what happened at the bar, and she doesn't care. The girl – you didn't even bother to learn her name, you called Yang's name when you came anyways – slips into her skintight dress and turns to you.

Her ribs stretch outwards under cheap latex like knobby hands and you try not to cringe in despair. You notice the pockmarks at the inside of her arms when she turns towards you, and the dazed, drugged out stare she gives you. Her hair falls around her hips in loose, flat curls, and her lipstick is smudged across your thighs. There's no kissing during one-night stands, or at least not the ones you get involved in, and when she tosses you a cigarette from the foot at the bed, you arch your brow.

"One for the road. Thanks, or whatever." You watch her leave, and light the second cigarette, closing your eyes, trying to forget.

* * *

You don't know where you're supposed to go now, what the exact protocol is after you run away from the woman who loved you for the second time. You wander through Mistral, scrounge enough money up for a pack of cigarettes, and walk through the rain. It's something poetic and beautiful, you suppose, if someone else less fucked up was doing it instead of you.

Yang crosses your mind like latticework, and you just keep walking from each corner of the city, crossing past Mistral's infamous mix of vintage architecture and sleek steel buildings. You don't have a watch, but you'd say it's around four or five in the morning, judging by the early morning chill that coats the skyline with fog.

You make your way to the pier, and watch idly as the tide crashes in. You huddle closer into your coat and breathe in the salt air until your lungs ache. Your entire pack has been forgotten and crushed underfoot; you made a wish on your last one, but you're not really sure if it's a wish because maybe it's more of a prayer when all you thought of was Yang.

Yang opens the bar early on the weekends, so you walk across the city, watching Mistral's holographic city billboards glimmer into life. There's an abundance of Faunus on the streets, and that usually puts you at ease, but you keep your eyes on your feet until you end up at the bar again.

The sign's still flipped to closed and you walk in anyways – Yang must have forgotten to lock up – and immediately duck at a glass flying towards your head. The martini glass shatters into millions of fractals, a few embedding into the wooden door from the sheer force that Yang's put into her throw.

"You _fucking_ bitch." Yang seethes from behind the bar. Dark circles ring under her eyes and for the first time in your life, you're scared of Yang. Thick flames start to lick up the ends of her hair, and she's still in the same clothes she was wearing yesterday.

"What?" You ask, keeping an eye on her hand as she gropes for a shot glass behind her. "Whoa, what?"

"You fucking left last night and you didn't come back – I went out looking for you at _five_ in the fucking morning, Blake Belladonna, you fucking cocksucker, I'm going to _kill_ you – "

"I'm here now, aren't I?" You snap irritably. A night without sleep is starting to edge in on your nerves, and the lights in the bar seem all too bright all of a sudden. She narrows her eyes at you and takes a few breaths to calm herself down, wiping at a wine glass to keep her hands from jumping to your throat.

"I thought you left again." She mutters, turning her back to you to rearrange her liquor shelf.

"Oh." You run a hand through your hair nervously. "I wouldn't… I wouldn't do that – "

"It happened before, didn't it?" Her voice is flat and emotionless, missing an inflection at the end, and for some reason, it hurts more than any pain you've ever experienced before.

"Go rest. You look like death." She tells you, and you dig your hands in your pockets and start to walk to the back room before turning around.

"I didn't want to leave."

"You didn't have to." She says instantly, like its been waiting on the tip of her tongue.

"I had to, Yang, what if they killed you guys too?"

"You still don't get it, do you?" Yang's voice is soft around the edges, almost raspy. "We would have died protecting you. We didn't care."

You stand there for what seems like an eternity, staring down at the floors of the bar. She sighs. "Please, just rest. Looking at you makes me tired." You nod unwillingly, wishing you could tell her how much you love her, how much warmth floods your body whenever she looks at you, but she won't even make eye contact, and waits until your footsteps recede to burst into tears.

* * *

You've been staring up at the ceiling in the dark room for what seems like an eternity, and the clock on the bedside table blinks two hours until sunrise. Your hands lace lightly around your stomach, the faintest pressure against your stomach a welcome comfort.

Yang's still not home, and you think of her, leaning against your doorway, arms crossed tightly across her chest, offering you nothing but a swift goodbye. You suppose she's forgiven you in some ways; she cooked you dinner and poured you a drink from her own personal stash. She had dressed up for her night out, but everything she wore was formal compared to her everyday uniform of an exchangeable V-neck and tight fitting jeans.

She had chosen to wear a pair of high-waisted shorts and a fresh, white shirt that fit snugly across her cleavage and cut out the line of her waist. The four straps of her black garter belt snuck out from the edges of her shorts, holding up a pair of black thigh highs.

You had waited all night, just to make sure she had gotten home safe, and when the front door clicks open and footsteps echo along the foyer, you stand up, the doorknob already in your palm. When you open it, you can hear Yang cursing under her breath, and when you poke your head out tentatively from the shadows, the light from the oven casts a line of contrast against her bloody knuckles.

_Oh._

She catches your eyes while turning around and grabbing some paper towels. There's a certain flicker of something that you can't put your finger on in her eyes, but she just turns to sit down at her kitchen counter and wipes her hands.

"Go back to bed."

"I wasn't asleep."

She gives you a flat glare, but continues to tend to her wounds. You can tell she's not in the mood for a fight; by the look of the stray blood spots on her shirt, she already found it a few hours ago. The blood on her shirt isn't hers, and you let go of a breath that you'd been absently holding, and the air around her glimmers with a certain adrenaline rush.

"What happened?" You still hide in the shadows, but lean interestedly towards her when she winces at a particularly painful dab.

"_Go back to bed_."

"Are you going to keep doing this?" You demand immediately, and nearly spit in fury when she doesn't even bat an eye. "You offer me a place to stay and shut me out? What the hell is the point in that? I never thought you could be such a passive aggressive – "

"You were gone for _five _years, Blake. And if you want me to forgive you in a few weeks, then you must be delusional." Yang cuts you off so quickly and you wince at the unfamiliar edge of flint in her voice. "God. I _loved _you, Blake. And you left like the fucking coward you are."

The words that come out of her mouth don't match her actions, which are calm and calculated. Her knuckles have finally stopped bleeding, but the blood that's already dried around her fists won't come off until she washes her hands. She stands again, tossing the paper towels into the bin.

You don't know what comes over you, but it feels like a demon that's eating you alive and consuming every rational thought in your mind, replacing logic with hellfire and stars and the constellation of scratch marks you could spin into formation across her back. You cross the distance between the two of you in a few purposeful strides and pin her hips against the edge of the kitchen sink with yours.

Her back is to you, but you can still see the pulse in her throat jump suddenly. You press your lips to the shell of her ear. "And what about now?"

She swallows thickly and speaks only when she gets her voice under control. "What do you mean?"

You frame her hands on the counter with yours, and you can see her fingers trembling as they clutch for support. You lean forward, pushing her hipbones flush against the granite, until they meet with a distinct clash of warm flesh and cold rock. Yang bites back a whimper at the back of her throat.

"Do you still love me?"

She turns around in a flash of fury, and her mouth latches against yours and your hands fly to her waist – she's warm and secure and grounding you like an anchor, and she licks across the seam of your mouth like a feral animal. She's nothing like the one night fucks that you usually find in a bar; she knows that you were made to break and she's not afraid to shatter you.

Her tongue is fire, leaves blue flames that skim across the roof of your mouth and eat away at the enamel of your teeth. Her hands grip your jaw like a vice and you know that a bruise will flower there in the morning, but you can't find the willpower or the want to tell her to stop, so you let her grab and claw and scratch all she wants.

Your hands slip into the back pockets of her shorts and her hips snap up instantly, meeting the sweet friction of your body. She shoves her head to the side to catch her breath, and you nose down the line of her cheekbone, through a few strands of hair, kissing under her jaw, but she grabs you again, kisses you so strongly that you fall into her. Her kisses become fervent and wild, and she pushes her thumbs under your jawline and shoves upwards, forcing you into a sign of submission.

Yang presses a loose, open-mouthed kiss to the swell of your neck, and her thumbnails dig into your skin hard enough to bring tiny pinpricks of blood. You know that if Yang wanted to, she could snap your neck with one movement, and you know that that idea shouldn't send your veins thrumming like wires pulled taut, but goddamn if it doesn't anyways.

Her long fingers massage the nape of your neck roughly, one hand snaking up to thumb at the base of your Faunus ears, and a filthy moan leaks out of your mouth and simmers in the air. Her touch is electrifying, and when you look at her, eyes half-lidded as she kneels slowly in front of you, and you can't help but shudder and buck your hips readily.

She tugs on the hem of your sleep shirt, fingers ghosting at the line of skin that appears when she flicks her knuckles up. You take off your shirt without a second thought and her hand crawls up the planes of your stomach, a finger brushing under one of your breasts.

A fluctuating whimper falls out of your mouth when she drags her finger across the peak of one breast, nails a faint afterthought when she moves to the other swell of your chest. You clamp your bottom lip between your teeth, and a jagged fault line blossoms across your mouth, Yang watches you lick across it with a look of fire in her eyes.

Your knees have turned weak from her touch, from her scent, from her eyes, slowly shifting from pastel lavender to a hungry, lusty garnet, and you tremble furiously, knees knocking against the bottom cabinets by your legs. Her hands touch just behind your kneecaps and steady you until you can finally breathe normally.

She looks up at you, lashes fluttering against her cheekbones. "I always will." You look at her, one hand tentatively threading through her hair. She slips your sleep shorts down your legs slowly, inching the fabric against the swell of your inner thigh until you squirm, pressing your thighs together in a search for contact. One tanned finger hooks in the band of your underwear and tugs carefully. You still immediately, looking down to watch the crest of your pale hipbone appear, stark white and pure, almost unbelievably pale against the black lace of your underwear.

Yang lowers her head slowly, minute movements until her mouth rests against the bone there. She meets eyes with you and sinks her teeth into the thin skin there, and warmth floods through your body, and you can practically feel the outline of her incisors as if you were running your fingers against the edge of her teeth, and when she pulls away, she only speaks four words.

"I'll always love you."

* * *

You wake up slowly, bleary eyed and dressed a Beacon Academy shirt that Yang's cut and cropped into a muscle t-shirt, and the memories of last night's escapades start coming back like a tape in rewind. Yang had been everything that you'd missed, fingers gripping your waist and mouth latched across your stomach, and you shudder faintly when the phantom feeling of her hand between your legs returns.

The kitchen counter had been cold against your palms when she had slowly pushed you against it, and her mouth had been so soft, lips ghosting over your skin to the point where you had screamed out, begged for more.

Her tee rides up your stomach when you stretch, and you pull it up when you see the edges of a hickey below your navel. Instead of a few sloppy love bites, Yang has left behind a perfectly straight line of bruises trailing down from the flat of your sternum to the edge of your shirt. You brush over them slowly, goose bumps cropping up along your skin when your hand passes over them.

You turn to face Yang and watch her sleep, hair piled atop her head into a golden halo. Her lips are parted in the sweetest, faint smile, and you reach out despite yourself, just to thumb across her lower lip. The shirt she wears slides off of one of her golden shoulders, and you smile at the hickey she has on her collarbones, and you admire your handiwork before clicking your thumbnail against her lower teeth. She groans just under her breath and mumbles something nonsensical.

Yang leans into your touch and opens her eyes, smiling while bunting your hand with her temple. Her eyes close when you unwind the hair tie from her bun and thread through the soft gold of her locks. She's always been partial to people playing with her hair; she's quite proud of a few stories where exes tried to touch her hair and ended up with a broken nose from a particularly forceful headbutt.

It's all very quiet and lazy, the both of you bathed in afternoon light bleeding through shuttered windows, your left hand tangled in her hair, and her eyes closing slowly.

You'd be pleased just to lie there, tucking hair behind Yang's ear, and suddenly she's there, slanted across your torso, stealing your breath away and replacing it with hers. This is much better. She brushes her fingers along your jawline and kisses you, licking at the corner of your mouth.

You can't help the muted whimper that falls out of your mouth and she continues to press closer to you, slowly crawling across the bed until her kneecaps dig into the comforter near your waist. She leans down onto her palms, hair curtaining on every side of your face, and she smirks.

"Looks good on you."

You look down at your shirt, and the bright sunflower hue on your skin looks almost neon. You're used to black and white, the monochromatic hues in sharp, clean-cut clothes, but the pure yellow and scissor-ragged hem are somehow better in every way.

"Buuuuut…" Yang tugs at the edge of it and laughs when you blush. "I think it'd look better on the floor." When she beams at you, you can't help but laugh, loud and full-hearted.

"Yang, we're two minutes away from fucking and you wanna whip out a shitty pick up line now?" Yang arches an eyebrow at you interestedly.

"Two minutes, huh? Must have made you remembered what you were missing out on last night." You swing sloppily for her jaw and she ducks it effortlessly. She fixes you with a strong gaze, and the playful seduction that you're both wrapped up in pauses, and there's genuine affection in her eyes now.

"I really did miss you." She says softly, and you look at her, your hand slipping up near her thigh. "I didn't stop thinking about you. I couldn't." Yang laughs, and squints at you, face scrunched up comically. "Do you know how many people I fucked trying to forget about you?"

You can't help it when a laugh sputters out of your mouth and she flips you off. "You don't! Well, in case you forgot, _I_ am a fine piece of ass." You squeeze her leg and smile at her.

"I didn't forget. Do people still mistake you for that girl in the pinup spreads?" You ask, remembering a whiskey and sepia tinted memory in a bar that had been equally mortifying for everyone involved. Yang was apparently an exact doppelganger for a model that was incredibly active and infamous in the BDSM scene.

Yang scoffs out a blustering laugh and covers her hand with her mouth. "Only everyday. Sometimes I just roll with it. The frat boys from Mistral U always buy more drinks once you convince them you're a hardcore bondage porn star."

You both fall into easy laughter until Yang leans down to kiss you. It's nothing like last night; this time she kisses you sweetly, smiles into your mouth and eases a leg between your thighs. You pull away from the kiss, gasping, grinding down onto her leg, and she kisses the side of your neck, laving over a bite mark, helping you let go.

* * *

Sunday night rolls around and Ruby and Weiss come by for dinner, bringing some wine that they picked up on their honeymoon. Yang's spent most of the afternoon marinating the steaks you picked up for her at the market. The past few days have been blissful, and you've set up a spot at the bar with your book so that you can watch her work.

After closing the bar, Yang will lead you up the stairs, touching you lightly, pressing your hand against her chest. The night is loud and magnificent, and Yang stretches and moans and whines until you're both spent and sated.

You blush thinking about it at the dinner table and Yang gives you a look like she knows what you're thinking about. Weiss and Ruby are both flushed from their drinks, and they look so happy that you can't help but smile too.

Somehow, you all fall into a conversation about sex toys and you can see Weiss start to mentally check out before Ruby says, "Oh, Weiss really likes this – " After a few more drinks and a flushed Weiss, they leave, and the two squeeze you so hard that you tear up.

Yang's cleaning up, wine glasses already washed and plates scraped. "Did you like dinner?" She asks, looking at you over her shoulder. You nod, shove your hands in your pockets and walk over to her. She's not looking at you, talking about her steak marinade recipe instead.

You wrap your arms around her waist and breathe her in deep, and murmur against her cheek. "As amazing as dinner was, I can think of something that tastes _much _better." Yang throws her head back and laughs, but still starts moving her hips against yours in a subtle grind.

"You are such a dork, you know that?" Yang slips her head into the hollow between your shoulder and neck, somehow managing to continue washing dishes. You hum out in agreement. She rolls her hips back against you, humming nonchalantly.

"You make me happy." She says quietly, still smiling. Your hand travels under the hem of her shirt and she leans appreciatively towards the warmth of your skin.

"You make me happy too." You kiss her cheek and she turns to turn your somewhat chaste touching into a real kiss. Her hands are still wet and soapy from the sink and they thread through your hair, tugging a little.

She's secure in your hands, and everything with her feels real. She kisses down your neck slowly, grazing her teeth over your skin, and you groan, thumbing at the slope of her cheekbone.

"Babe." You look down at her, broken from your daze. "As much as I love my kitchen and I love fucking you, I do not love kitchen fucking. My back still hurts from last time." You laugh aloud at that one, and lead her by her hand through the hallways, smiling until your cheeks hurt.

"Hurry up then. I don't like to be kept waiting."

* * *

The bar's usual patrons file out sleepily, and you watch from behind the bar with Yang. You reach over and kiss Yang slowly, but she pulls away quickly. She jerks her head towards a man who's been sitting in the same spot with a bottle of tequila since opening. You grumble and stalk towards the man, trying to make out any features from under his hat.

"Excuse me, sir, we're closing now, but you're free to come back tomorrow."

"Hello, Blake. How nice to see you again." There's no time to fight back when Adam hits you over the head with a bottle.

You come to consciousness, bound by your feet and hands to a chair, and watch as Adam towers above Yang, sliding his hip knife so deep into her cheekbone that you can feel the pain yourself. She screams around the gag in her mouth, nearly passing out, and you can practically see her life ending before your eyes. There's so much blood – it's tinting your eyesight until everything's stained brightly, too chipper for the torture that's happening before you.

"Oh!" Adam cries conversationally. "How nice of you to finally join us. Your girlfriend is quite the fighter." When you scream and struggle against your bindings, he continues talking like he's discussing the weather.

"Well, Blake, I have to say that I'm disappointed. All our time training and you go soft for a human." Adam digs his knifepoint into Yang's bicep, right through the dragon's dark eye tattooed onto her skin, and forces her to sit still, one hand wrapping around her neck. "Would you be offended if I told you that I expected it?"

He's got you bound but ungagged across the room from Yang, who's covered in blood and sobbing through the pain. It's too much to see her writhing, begging, thrashing under Adam's wicked gaze. You refuse to speak to him, refuse to give him the pleasure of small talk while he breaks Yang apart.

"Hmm… if I knew you were going to be such a poor sport, I wouldn't have gotten all excited. Really, it was quite the adventure chasing you all around Remnant. But you can't escape the White Fang, Blake. At least not without proper exit measures." When he sees you crying, holding back bile, he frowns. "But I've always been kind. And I'm sure that you know what happened to Tukson. Unfortunately, that happened before I could step in and take over things.

"Anyways." He sheaths the knife and you almost sob in relief. In one swift movement, a revolver appears in his right hand, sleek black with one Dust crystal embedded in its root. "The White Fang doesn't take nicely to one of our own leaving. Usually before they leave, we find out, shoot them in front of their family, and all that fun stuff. And if they manage to leave before we take care of them first… well, we still find them and kill them."

He gestures casually with his gun towards you, but it's not so nonchalant as he'd hope to be, because you can see his slight aim towards your temple. "You have a choice today, Blake. Either I kill you right now, in front of your darling girlfriend, or you can kill her and you can walk free. An eye for an eye, you see?"

Yang's lolling out of consciousness, and you just want her to stop hurting so you look at Adam, cold ice in your eyes.

"I'll do it."

"What'll it be?" He asks, smiling maliciously.

All you say is, "Untie me." Adam laughs loudly and snaps your bonds with his knife, steel coming a bit too close to the veins on your wrist for your comfort. You stand shakily, and Adam strides over to Yang, plucking the gag from her mouth easily. When you stare at him, he smiles.

"I want to hear her beg you not to do it."

Yang looks at you, and she smiles bloodily.

"It's okay, Blake. It's okay." Her voice is barely above a whisper, but you can tell she means every word of it. "It's okay… I love you so much, I love you, I'll always love you." Adam frowns heavily at that but hands you his revolver silently. It feels natural in your hand, and you raise it slowly.

You pull down the hammer with your thumb and the bullet rolls into place. There's a moment when Yang's looking at you, bright-eyed and beautiful even with gaping wounds across her face. Adam taps his foot and barks at you impatiently.

"You know what to do."

"Yeah." You say. "I do."

In one swift movement, you turn and rush Adam, driving him into the counter of the bar with the barrel of your gun. He drives his fist into the back of your head, but you push him with all of the strength in your body. Blood dribbles down the peak of your forehead; the edge of his belt buckle cuts into your skin.

You shoot him once in the stomach, and he falls to his knees, and the last bullet goes through his forehead, freezing his last look of utter dismay forever.

You rush for Yang, untying her hands and brushing away the bloodstained hair away from her face. "It's okay, Yang, you're alright, we're alright." She looks at you through half-open eyes and reaches for your jawline.

"Love you."

"Love you more."

* * *

Yang sleeps in her hospital bed looking soft and small in the stark white of the medical equipment. Ambulances had come after you had dialed them with shaky hands, and you had been examined once and stitched up a small gash on your forehead.

Yang, on the other hand, had been a few inches away from losing sight in her left eye. The knife had gone so deep that optic nerve endings had been affected, but she would recover. The stab wound in her arm was stitched, the dragon's eye replaced with even loops of black thread instead of ink.

Yang's on some pretty intense pain meds, so you just watch her chest move up and down, steady, with a perfect rhythm that matches your own. She fell asleep with her hand in yours, and you kiss it, pressing love letters that you'll never writing into her skin.

You look at her, just look at her, with her bright yellow hair washed of all the blood she's lost and her mouth, parted slightly, and you can't help but fall in love with her again. Your Scroll buzzes in your pocket and you read the small, bubbled notification.

_From: Ruby Rose_

_ sit tight weiss and i r coming_

_ we r bringing food _

There was a two-minute gap between the next message.

_thank you. _

You look at Yang again and lean over to kiss her, just to feel her mouth against yours. You know it won't be easy. You know that it'll be dangerous. You know that it'll be terrifying and rough but you know that you are loved. You are loved.

You don't run.

You stay.


End file.
